Contents
Acknowledgments
1 The First Americans
Imagining Eden
Native American Oral Traditions
Spanish and French Encounters with America
Anglo-American Encounters
Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
Puritan narratives
Challenges to the Puritan oligarchy
Some colonial poetry
Enemies within and without
Trends toward the secular and resistance
Toward the Revolution
Alternative voices of Revolution
Writing Revolution: Poetry, drama, fiction
2 Inventing Americas
Making a Nation
The Making of American Myths
Myths of an emerging nation
The making of Western myth
The making of Southern myth
Legends of the Old Southwest
The Making of American Selves
The Transcendentalists
Voices of African-American identity
The Making of Many Americas
Native American writing
Oral culture of the Hispanic Southwest
African-American polemic and poetry
Abolitionist and pro-slavery writing
Abolitionism and feminism
African-American writing
The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry
The emergence of American narratives
Women writers and storytellers
Spirituals and folk songs
American poetic voices
3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future
Rebuilding a Nation
The Development of Literary Regionalism
From Adam to outsider
Regionalism in the West and Midwest
African-American and Native American voices
Regionalism in New England
Regionalism in the South
The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism
Capturing the commonplace
Capturing the real thing
Toward Naturalism
The Development of Women’s Writing
Writing by African-American women
Writing and the condition of women
The Development of Many Americas
Things fall apart
Voices of resistance
Voices of reform
The immigrant encounter
4 Making It New
Changing National Identities
Between Victorianism and Modernism
The problem of race
Building bridges: Women writers
Critiques of American provincial life
Poetry and the search for form
The Inventions of Modernism
Imagism, Vorticism, and Objectivism
Making it new in poetry
Making it new in prose
Making it new in drama
Traditionalism, Politics, and Prophecy
The uses of traditionalism
Populism and radicalism
Prophetic voices
Community and Identity
Immigrant writing
Native American voices
The literature of the New Negro movement and beyond
Mass Culture and the Writer
Western, detective, and hardboiled fiction
Humorous writing
Fiction and popular culture
5 Negotiating the American Century
Toward a Transnational Nation
Formalists and Confessionals
From the mythological eye to the lonely “I” in poetry
From formalism to freedom in poetry
The uses of formalism
Confessional poetry
New formalists, new confessionals
Public and Private Histories
Documentary and dream in prose
Contested identities in prose
Crossing borders: Some women prose writers
Beats, Prophets, Aesthetes, and New Formalists
Rediscovering the American voice: The Black Mountain writers
Restoring the American vision: The San Francisco Renaissance
Recreating American rhythms: The beat generation
Reinventing the American self: The New York poets
Redefining American poetry: The New Formalists
Resisting orthodoxy: Dissent and experiment in fiction
The Art and Politics of Race
Defining a new black aesthetic
Defining a new black identity in prose
Defining a new black identity in drama
Telling impossible stories: Recent African-American fiction
Realism and its Discontents
Confronting the real, stretching the realistic in drama
New Journalists and dirty realists
Language and Genre
Watching nothing: Postmodernity in prose
The actuality of words: Postmodern poetry
Signs and scenes of crime, science fiction, and fantasy
Creating New Americas
Dreaming history: European immigrant writing
Remapping a nation: Chicano/a and Latino/a writing
Improvising America: Asian-American writing
New and ancient songs: The return of the Native American
After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11
Writing the crisis in prose
Writing the crisis in drama
Writing the crisis in poetry
Further Reading
Bibliographies and Reference Works
Anthologies
Chapter 1 The First Americans: American Literature Before and During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
Chapter 2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature, 1800–1865
Chapter 3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature, 1865–1900
Chapter 4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature, 1900–1945
Chapter 5 Negotiating the American Century: American Literature since 1945
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
This edition first published 2012
© 2012 Richard Gray
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gray, Richard J.
A history of American literature / Richard Gray. – 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9229-3 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4051-9228-6 (paper)
1. American literature–History and criticism. I. Title.
PS88.G73 2011
810.9–dc23
2011026044
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF: 9781444345674; ePub: 9781444345681; Wiley Online Library: 9781444345704; Mobi: 9781444345698
To
Sheona
Acknowledgments
In this history of American literature, I have tried to be responsive to the immense changes that have occurred over the past forty years in the study of American literature. In particular, I have tried to register the plurality of American culture and American writing: the continued inventing of communities, and the sustained imagining of nations, that constitute the literary history of the United States. I have accumulated many debts in the course of working on this book. In particular, I would like to thank friends at the British Academy, including Andrew Hook, Jon Stallworthy, and Wynn Thomas; colleagues and friends at other universities, among them Kasia Boddy, Susan Castillo, Henry Claridge, Richard Ellis, the late Kate Fullbrook, Mick Gidley, Sharon Monteith, Judie Newman, Helen Taylor, and Nahem Yousaf; and colleagues and friends in other parts of Europe and in Asia and the United States, especially Saki Bercovitch, Bob Brinkmeyer, the late George Dekker, Jan Nordby Gretlund, Lothar Honnighausen, Bob Lee, Marjorie Perloff, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Among my colleagues in the Department of Literature, I owe a special debt of thanks to Herbie Butterfield and Owen Robinson; I also owe special thanks to my many doctoral students. Sincere thanks are also due to Emma Bennett, the very best of editors, at Wiley-Blackwell for steering this book to completion, to Theo Savvas for helping so much and so efficiently with the research and preparation, and to Nick Hartley for his informed and invaluable advice on illustrations. Special thanks are also due to Brigitte Lee and Jack Messenger for, once again, proving themselves to be such thoughtful, meticulous, and creative copyeditors, and to my daughter Jessica for (also once again) making such a first-class job of proofreading and the compilation of the index. On a more personal note, I would like to thank my older daughter, Catharine, for her quick wit, warmth, intelligence, and understanding, and for providing me with the very best of son-in-laws, Ricky Baldwin, and two perfect grandsons, Izzy and Sam; my older son, Ben, for his thoughtfulness, courage, commitment, and good company; my younger daughter, Jessica, for her lively intelligence, grace, and kindness, as well as her refusal to take anything I say on trust; and my younger son, Jack, who, being without language, constantly reminds me that there are other, deeper ways of communicating. Finally, as always, I owe the deepest debt of all to my wife, Sheona, for her patience, her good humor, her clarity and tenderness of spirit, and for her love and support, for always being there when I need her. Without her, this book would never have been completed: which is why, quite naturally, it is dedicated to her.